Tesla continues battling with longtime executive departures, as veteran engineering executive Raj Jegannathan announced on Monday that he is leaving the company after 13 years.
Jegannathan, who joined the Elon Musk-led company in November 2012 as a Senior Staff Engineer, has worked in senior infrastructure and security roles.
In early 2025, he was elevated Vice President of IT, AI Infrastructure, Apps, Infosec, and Vehicle Service Operations.
The executive announced his departure on LinkedIn, writing that it “is challenging to encapsulate 13 years in a single post” and that, as “I move on, I do so with a full heart and excitement for what lies ahead.”
Sales Lead
Last July, Reuters reported that Jegannathan had been promoted to lead the company’s sales operations.
It wasn’t clear whether the appointment was permanent or an interim move.
However, the outlet noted that the engineer had recently grown closer to Musk and that he had no traditional sales experience.
He was notably filling in for Troy Jones, the company’s former Vice President of North America Sales and Service.
Jones, who worked for the company for over 15 years, left Tesla in mid-July, according to a Wall Street Journal report days earlier.
According to five people cited by Business Insider, Jegannathan worked to incorporate more AI tools in sales and service team workflows during his time on the sales team.
Sources told the outlet that Jegannathan had not been active on the internal company systems since late January and that he had not worked with the sales team for a few months.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Tesla has named Joe Ward, its Vice President for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), to oversee sales globally.
Ward, who has been responsible for operations in the EMEA markets for over five years, will reportedly lead the company’s sales, service, and delivery organization.
He first joined Tesla in 2010 as a logistics intern in the United Kingdom, and moved to the Netherlands to lead Sales Administration from 2012.
Recent Departures
Jegannathan is the latest executive to leave the company, after two vehicle program leaders exited late last year.
Siddhant Awasthi, program manager for the Cybertruck and Model 3, and Emmanuel Lamacchia, who oversaw the Model Y, both left the company in November, after about eight years at Tesla.
Ahead of Troy Jones’ departure last summer, Bloomberg reported that Omead Afshar, who worked as a Project Manager at the Office of the CEO, also left the company.
Afshar was one of CEO Elon Musk’s most trusted aides and a long-time fixture within the company’s senior leadership for the past eight years.
Additionally, the media outlet disclosed that Jenna Ferrua, the HR Director for the North American region, was exiting Tesla after five years.
Tesla’s Updated Mission
Last quarter, automotive revenue represented $17.7 billion (or about 70%) of Tesla‘s total $24.9 billion.
In the latest earnings report, the company has reaffirmed its AI-related ambitions, as it announced an investment of “approximately $2 billion” in xAI.
The company was acquired by SpaceX in a deal valued at $1.25 trillion earlier this month, following reports of the merger between the Elon Musk-led companies.
Musk was a guest on the Moonshots podcast recently, where he talked about Tesla‘s mission of building “a world of amazing abundance.”
The CEO agreed when one of the hosts suggested that while Tesla and SpaceX were initially “completely separate,” they now “actually interact because AI ties everything together.”
Late last year, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on X that he was changing the “Tesla mission wording” from “Sustainable Abundance” to “Amazing Abundance.”
